Sakhi (Gurmukhi: ਸਾਖੀ; sākhī) literally means 'historical account', 'anecdote', or 'story'. It is derived from the Sanskrit word sākṣī (साक्षी) which literally means 'witness'.[1][2]
The term refers to the accounts of the historical events in Sikhism. It is a tale usually from the era during the times of the Sikh Gurus and their devoted followers and associates.[3] However, many Sakhis do exist from the period before and after the times of the Ten Gurus. Most Sakhis have a moral lesson and highlight important Sikh principles.
A collection of over five-hundred anecdotes from Sikh history was said to have been compiled in a work known as the Panj Sau Sakhi, which is now lost.[4][5][6] An extant work titled Sau Sakhi contains a hundred anecdotes.
Below is a list of important Sakhis with a message for Sikhs.
Parchai, another form of life-stories, was also popular in India. A flourishing tradition of parchai about the lives of such bhaktas as Trilochan, Dhanna, Raidas, Kabir, Namdeva and Pipa came into being in the Braj-Sadhukari linguistic style. It seems that the vartakars move their vartas around saguna bhaktas, while the parchais did so around the nirguna sants. In the Punjab many a writer adopted the parchai style and wrote what are called parchis in Punjabi. These parchis, in Punjabi, were written in the Braj-Sadhukari language in the verse form (Suhajram: Parchian Sewaram) as well as in Punjabi prose (Sewadas Udasi: Parchian Guru Gobind Singh). Just as sakhis relate to the lives of gurus and their Sikhs, so the parchis pertain to the lives of Sewapanthi mahatmas. Sewapanth is a branch of the Sikh Panth itself. Sewapanthis were Sahajdhari Sikhs, i.e. those who believe in the tenets of the gurus, but do not keep the external form, especially the unshorn hair. On account of the fact that they could not be easily distinguished from the non-Sikhs in their external form, they came to be spared of the tyrannies of the Mughal rulers which the Sikhs with their easily identifiable external form had to undergo. The use of parchi nomenclature in contradistinction to sakhi and janamsakhi seems to be linked to the relatively distinctive identity of the Sewapanthis. In spite of the fact that they also have a narrative form, and a spiritual context, like the other genera, yet they reflect the distinctive Sewapanthi of Addanshahi tradition. In medieval times, the preservation of a distinctive identity was, perhaps, a compulsion for the various traditions. Was it, in some way, linked with the instinct for social survival? The parchis were also, perhaps, their more pervasive strategies aimed at survival through critical times.
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Modern Stories